The game was a classic and so was Jackson, the Saturday evening soundtrack for generations of college football fans. His melodic baritone filled millions of households with tales of Southerners and soph-ah-mores, with praise for the \u201cbig uglies\u201d and proclamations of \u201cHello, Heisman.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI still hear his voice,\u201d said his daughter, Melanie, standing Thursday in the office of the family home in Sherman Oaks, where Keith and Turi Ann raised their children Melanie, Lindsey and Christopher. \u201cI come up here sometimes just to say hi to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Melanie](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767311237_327_.jpeg\")
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Melanie Jackson, daughter of the late Keith Jackson, talks about some of her dad\u2019s memorabilia.<\/p>\n
(Allen J. Schaben\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Jackson, who died in 2018<\/a>, still lives in the hearts of his family, friends and fans, and his countless stories and famous calls are woven into the lore of college football \u2014 although he covered many sports \u2014 and the history of the Rose Bowl<\/a> itself.<\/p>\n \u201cHe knew the Rose Bowl better than any place,\u201d said Turi Ann, preparing to have a small group of family over to watch the game, as she does every year. \u201cThis was always a special, special day.\u201d<\/p>\n As they entered the stadium, fans of Indiana and Alabama were greeted by a statue of a smiling Jackson that was dedicated a year after he died. He\u2019s clutching a microphone and, as always, impeccably dressed.<\/p>\n The family made sure that statue was an accurate representation of Jackson, and they thought an early version made him look like Earl Scheib, the guy who built the discount car-painting empire.<\/p>\n A miniature version of the Keith Jackson statue that stands outside the Rose Bow Stadium is the centerpiece for Turi Ann Jackson\u2019s dinner table at their Sherman Oaks home.<\/p>\n (Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n When it comes to getting every detail just right, the Jacksons have an expert in the family. Son Lindsey is married to puppeteer and former Disney imagineer Terri Harden, whose enormous body of work includes controlling the face of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in \u201cGhostbusters.\u201d<\/p>\n If a bronze Keith Jackson was going to be standing outside the Rose Bowl, he was going to look like Keith Jackson, right down to the penny loafers.<\/p>\n In this age of uncertainty and transition in college sports, the memory of Jackson endures for millions of fans. He embodied tradition. He looked at the Rose Bowl as hallowed ground. The former Marine approached his job in a deeply serious way.<\/p>\n \u201cHe almost never needed more than one take,\u201d Melanie said. \u201cWhen he wrote those game intros, it was like poetry. He\u2019d write them out and then say them. … He didn\u2019t give opinions, he just told you what was happening.\u201d<\/p>\n How would Keith feel about the state of college football, with players making millions and staying at one school for moments? And what about UCLA trying to break its Rose Bowl lease?<\/p>\n In a framed and signed photo, Keith Jackson interviews famed Alabama coach Paul \u201cBear\u201d Bryant.<\/p>\n (Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if he\u2019d be happy or not. I can\u2019t say for him, really,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I think anything that takes away from the authenticity of the game and the broadcast and the viewers, that\u2019s what would bother him.\u201d<\/p>\n Keith and Turi Ann Jackson were living in Seattle when their daughter, their eldest child, was born. Turi Ann went into labor in the middle of the night, and Keith rushed her to the hospital. He was so flustered that he was still getting dressed in the car as he drove. At one point, police pulled him over for speeding \u2014 and were understandably confused to find a man half-dressed behind the wheel. After he explained that his wife was in labor, they quickly waved him on.<\/p>\n Melanie was born on Oct. 18, 1955, her dad\u2019s 27th birthday. They shared a special connection, and every year on that day, the family meets at the statue, rests a bouquet of roses in Keith\u2019s arms, open a bottle of good wine \u2014 a passion of his \u2014 share stories, laugh and cry.<\/p>\n On that shared birthday, a year after Jackson died, Melanie swaddled herself in one of his designer sports coats and listened to her dad\u2019s favorite song, the Willie Nelson and Kenny Chesney duet \u201cThat Lucky Old Sun,\u201d over and over until she fell asleep.<\/p>\n Lucky old sun ain\u2019t got nothing to do<\/p>\n But roll around in heaven all day<\/p>\n Jackson, a child of the Depression who grew up on a farm outside Carrollton, Ga., was among the most successful announcers in the history of television, but maintained a bit of that mentality of the kid who had to use pages of the Sears catalog for toilet paper. If he made a pot of coffee, he\u2019d want you to finish your cup \u2014 or put it in the fridge to drink it later. His big splurge was to have a Snickers bar on the plane when flying home from a game.<\/p>\n Melanie Jackson, left, Turi Ann Jackson and Sam Cracchiolo, Melanie\u2019s husband, stand in front of a portrait of Keith Jackson and Turi Ann.<\/p>\n (Allen J. Schaben\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n After games at the Rose Bowl, the family would meet at Clancy\u2019s Crab Broiler in Glendale, where Keith regularly ordered the fish soup. He was a regular guy, who loved spending time in a home filled with plaques and trophies and photos and footballs.<\/p>\n Melanie said the family would sometimes get seats for the Rose Bowl, but it was never a fancy VIP experience. They parked far away, walked in with the crowd, and watched like regular fans.<\/p>\n Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Fouts, his friend for decades, was alongside Jackson as color analyst for that final 2006 Rose Bowl.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve rewatched that game a few times,\u201d Fouts said. \u201cI don\u2019t know if you could do a game better than he did. With his voice and his way of calling the game, it\u2019s a treasure.\u201d<\/p>\n At the Jackson home, filled with memories and the echo of Keith\u2019s voice, there are too many treasures to count.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even the \u201cGranddaddy of Them All\u201d has a dad. That\u2019s the late and legendary ABC Sports announcer Keith…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":485838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,219557,246,1888,1910,13819,188334,219556,2961,58428,224,5337,219554,3810,10999,39338,58047,219555,1628],"class_list":{"0":"post-485837","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-college-football-fan","11":"tag-family","12":"tag-fan","13":"tag-game","14":"tag-jackson","15":"tag-keith","16":"tag-keith-jackson","17":"tag-la","18":"tag-lindsey","19":"tag-los-angeles","20":"tag-losangeles","21":"tag-melanie","22":"tag-memory","23":"tag-million","24":"tag-rose-bowl","25":"tag-statue","26":"tag-turi-ann","27":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115822516431928015","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767311238_743_.jpeg\")
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